Your Password or Your Privacy: Why Partners Share—And Why They Shouldn’t Read more: Sharing Passwords with a Partner: Is It Ever a Good Idea?

2014-02-26

Matthew Breuer has shared the passwords to his computer, email and social media accounts with every girlfriend he’s ever had. It’s a matter of convenience — she can check his email when he can’t access it or get into his phone to change the song playing on the speakers. But it’s also symbolic.

“I feel like it’s so much easier to live in a relationship where you know you have nothing to hide and are entirely 100 percent honest about who you are and what you’re doing,” he says. “Times in my life when I’ve realized that something wasn’t working in my relationship coincided with times when I would be worried, ‘Oh, do I really want to say this on Facebook to somebody else?’ It’s such a red flag if there’s something you’re concerned about your partner seeing. That means there’s some fundamental issue with your relationship beyond privacy.”

Breuer, a 22-year-old student at Yale University, has most American couples on his side. According to a recent Pew study, 67% of Internet users in marriages or relationships have shared passwords to one or more of their accounts with their partner.

Though we don’t feel comfortable exchanging passwords with perhaps more trustworthy family members and long-term friends, we do feel comfortable exchanging access to our personal information with boyfriends and girlfriends. It’s an exercise in trust, the logic goes. If you have nothing to hide, why would you want to hide your password? And, as Breuer point out, knowing someone may look over your shoulder can keep you honest.

For Jasmine Tobie, a 29-year-old graduate student at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa, seeing someone else’s transgressions via email has saved them from a toxic relationship. After finding some receipts that proved her boyfriend was lying to her about being on a business trip one weekend, she decided to look at his email to be sure before she pulled the plug on the relationship. “Once I found that I just had to have more evidence.”

She didn’t know his password, but was able to guess correctly using clues on his desktop. “He was still ‘communicating’ with his exes. He had taken a trip to visit an ex and told me it was a work trip. He was still signed up with dating sites and other ‘hookup’ sites and actively communicating with those people…I found some pictures of him and people he swore were ‘friends’ in the act.” The two had dated for a year and lived together for about nine months. “I was trying to find some way to give him the benefit of the doubt. In the end, it did clarify for me that he was not it for me at all and that there were issues I couldn’t fix.”

Tobie says those were extraordinary circumstances, and she wouldn’t read someone else’s emails again. She doesn’t share passwords with her current boyfriend.

In most circumstances, psychologists suggest keeping passwords private. ”In relationships, we depend on each other for a lot of things, but it’s good and healthy to have some independence too,” says Kelly Campbell, PhD, an Associate Professor of Psychology at California State University. “The more you self-disclose, the happier you are. But the happiest couples have some degree of secrecy and privacy.”

Unsurprisingly, sharing passwords can cause some serious problems during a relationship or after it ends.

Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes — the book that inspired Mean Girls — advises the teens she talks to for her research to not share passwords because “the relationships can change so quickly, and the emotions behind the breakups can be so strong.” She says that one high schooler she worked with was blind-sided when his ex-girlfriend found his phone. “She knew where he charged his pone during class and knew his password, so she went in and sent all sorts of texts to friends, to another girl he was talking to — it really created a lot of problems for him.”

Though one might assume that teens and 20-somethings are the ones foolishly sharing passwords — and suffering from the resulting drama — the survey found that the practice of password-sharing is pretty equal across age groups, and that 18-29-year-olds were actually the least likely to share passwords. Sixty-four percent of 18-29-year-olds share passwords, compared with 70% of 30-49-year-olds, 66% of 50-64-year-olds, and 69% of those over 65.

And you don’t have to be a teenager to have password problems with your significant other. Suzy*, a 46-year-old mother living in Brooklyn, got into a dangerous situation years ago when her then-boyfriend started reading her emails. She hadn’t given him her password, but one day she forgot to log out and he checked her email. The couple had been on-again-off-again, and she hadn’t told him that she had created an online dating profile while they were apart. She had since deleted the profile and deleted most of the email exchanges with the men she met through the site. “But he went through all my emails, including ones that I had thrown away. He went into every folder. He got really mad and basically attacked me,” she says. “I ended up having to call an ambulance.”

Since, she says she’s never even considered sharing passwords with a significant other. “I now have this paranoia where I wouldn’t even share it even if I trusted someone. You never know what’s going to upset someone,” she says. ‘I don’t know if that makes me less trusting or just wiser.”

Still, optimists like Breuer are undeterred by such horror stories. Breuer says he has always developed friendships with the girls he has dated before dating, and therefore felt they could be honest with one another. ”I think sharing passwords honestly ends up affording you the privacy you want,” Breuer says, pointing to a password etiquette that has developed between him and his partners in recent years. “Just because you tell somebody your password to things doesn’t mean they actually end up looking through your stuff.” Breuer says he’s never changed his password after a breakup since he’s always trusted and respected those he has dated.

Campbell says the best way to determine if you’re ready to share passwords with your significant other is to check and see if you’re on the same page. “If you have any question in your mind, the answer is no,” says Campbell. “I would say that it should be reciprocal. You shouldn’t be sharing something if your partner also didn’t share it…People are happiest when they have a match. You and your partner should be a match in that respect too.”

But much of the tough negotiating about privacy goes out the door once you have kids. “Sure, a lot of people have found out about their significant other’s indiscretions by looking at the texts on that person’s phone,” says Wiseman. “But once you have children, the constant checking of logistics with the other person to just get through the day—to get everyone to basketball practice on time—blows all of this privacy stuff out of the water.”

Interestingly, the attitude about privacy seems to change when it’s the child’s, not the partner’s, text messages in question. Both Wiseman and Suzy admitted that they’ll often try to figure out their children’s passwords or have their kids show them text exchanges to make sure they’re not getting into any trouble.

But presumably, by 18, you’ve earned the right to some privacy if you choose to have it.

What Men Share on Social Media But Not With You

Here’s a scenario you might recognize if you’re a woman dating a social media butterfly: You’re sitting on the couch together silently watching TV. When you take a moment to peek at your Twitter feed, you see your significant other has been sharing a stream of personal thoughts about House of Cards with the Twitterverse—even though he hasn’t uttered a word to you.

It’s no surprise that men tend to be more tight-lipped than women about their thoughts and feelings, but social media is creating a haven for some men to express themselves online in ways they don’t in person—and never would have before. From a relationship perspective, that can be a good and bad thing. Women can now turn to social media to get more insight into what their partners think, but where’s the intimacy in that when those feelings are also being broadcast to hundreds of Facebook friends and thousands of Twitter followers?

Recent data from Pew Research Center suggests that social media is making its way into relationships more than ever, with 74% of couples surveyed saying the Internet has impacted their relationship in a good way. Women are more likely than men to use social media, with 71% of women participating compared with 62% of men, according to the latest report from Women’s Media Center. However, what psychologists and researchers find especially interesting is that, while women are equally willing to share the the thoughts they spew out into the digital ether with someone face to face, men are much less likely to do the same.

Eva Buechel, a PhD candidate at the University of Miami who has studied why people share content online, has found that men and women who experience social anxiety, and therefore have a greater need to express their negative emotions and seek support, are equally likely to maintain a blog or social media account. However, “while socially apprehensive females share equally across different communication channels—face to face or microblog—males seem to show a very strong preference for microblog,” Buechel says. Introverts also find it easier to share their thoughts online than in person.

Other research from Northwestern University shows that men are increasingly more likely to share their creative work, like writing, music, or art, online. Nearly two-thirds of men in a 2008 study said they post their work online, compared with only half of the women who reported posting.

Females, of course, are well versed at expressing their feelings. “Women usually have close and intimate friendships, which might make it easy to approach a friend when they need to talk to someone,” says Buechel. “Men have different relationships with their friends, and they might find it more difficult to approach someone in particular to talk to when they need someone to listen or comfort them.”

Such friendship dynamics can contribute to men feeling more apprehensive about expressing themselves when it comes to real, rather than digital, life. “When men are texting, emailing, or communicating through another technological channel, they feel less threatened and are more likely to share their thoughts and feelings because they don’t have to deal with the reaction from the other person in-person, in real-time,” says Dr. Seth Meyers, a Los Angeles psychologist.

That’s one reason Avidan Ackerson, 28, a software engineer in New York with three different Twitter accounts, tends to share more personal things on Twitter than he does on Facebook. “I don’t necessarily always want someone who knows me well to know things about me, but I want someone to know these things,” he says.

Ben*, 28, who works in commercial real estate finance in New York City and tweets as much as 50 times a day, has yet to reveal his Twitter handle to the woman he’s been dating for a month, even though he tweeted about their first date shortly after it happened. “It’s not something I am embarrassed to share, but it’s a level of intimacy we have not yet achieved in real life,” he says. And it will probably be months before they become Facebook friends.

“Connecting online offers men the illusion of security, even though it often causes frustration later among their dates who are wondering, ‘Why is he different and more closed when we’re actually together?’” Meyers says.

Though frustrating for women who prefer face to face communication with their mates, social media may offer a halfway point. “Men are not very good communicators,” says Michael Busby, 47, a system programmer and lecturer at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, and an avid blogger. “When we get frustrated, we really start to break down. There are times when [I get overwhelmed in the classroom], I start to stutter. I have to calm down. But a controlled environment encourages us to have more confidence.”

Jessica Riches, 23, a social media consultant in London says her boyfriend, who tweets constantly, is pretty good at communicating. But visiting his Twitter page and seeing everything from his day-to-day activities to his thoughts and feelings can make her feel closer to him as well. “I look at it more regularly [when] I miss him and wonder what he’s up to.”

Still, for a woman from Venus and a man from Mars, there’s something frustrating about a man’s willingness to communicate with thousands of people—some friends, some strangers—in a way he can’t seem to do with the person lying right next to him in bed.

That’s despite the fact that the gold standard for treating sleep disturbances, recommended by the National Institutes of Health and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI). CBTI, which focuses on changing behaviors that can contribute to poor sleep, has been shown to work long-term while sleeping medications tend to lose effectiveness after a few weeks (sleep medications may, however, be prescribed initially along with CBTI).

So why are pills the most common solution? Convenience, for one. Even if you’re willing to seek out a sleep experts who is qualified to give CBTI, you may not find one near you. Despite the epidemic of sleep disorders and their impact on health, there are only a few hundred sleep experts in the whole country.

Doctors may also be unaware of the therapy. “I do not think many doctors know about CBTI,” says Rachel Manber, professor of psychiatry and behavorial sciences at Stanford University Medical Center. “Some provide sleep hygiene recommendations. However, like dental hygiene, sleep hygiene is best thought of as preventive rather than treatment.” These include sleeping in a dark room, sticking to regular bed times, and avoiding caffeine and exercise before bedtime.

If you did find your way to a sleep clinic expert, you would have an extensive interview about your medical history and sleep problems and fill out a detailed sleep diary for two weeks, then return for treatment. If that information points to a medical problem like sleep apnea, then you would have to spend at least one night sleeping in a lab, hooked up to a multitude of sensors that monitor your respiration, heart rate, and sleep level measured by an EEG. Then, after these recordings help to diagnose your sleep issues, you would start treatments with a therapist to develop habits that condition you to sleep better at bedtime and improve your quality of sleep, by helping you to turn down stressful thoughts and avoid things around you that interfere with good sleep.

Most CBTI treatments take four to six weeks to be fully effective, which helps to explain why it pales in comparison to the immediate, if not long-lasting, benefit of sleeping pills. But now, Israeli scientists have come up with a way to potentially streamline the therapy for some by bypassing the sleep lab and delivering the treatment via smartphone.

SleepRate is an app that helps people who can’t or won’t go to a sleep clinic to generate, in DIY fashion, the same kind of information that all the monitors do to help sleep experts design the right behavioral therapy for patients. Anda Baharav, SleepRate’s founder and a former researcher at the Medical Physics Department at Tel Aviv University says this product can detect sleep disturbances by mathematically defining the connection between sleep, heart rate and respiration. They have combined their diagnostic method with a smartphone adaptation of a Stanford University proprietary CBTI treatment to bring CBTI to more people with sleep disorders. Anyone with an iPhone or certain other smartphones can download the app kit for $99, which comes with the sleep plan and a heart-rate monitor worn across the chest.

Here’s how it works. You sleep in your own bed for five nights with the chest belt and app on, and you also record how you feel subjectively about your sleep and alertness before you start the program, and then again every evening and morning for the five days of the assessment. The app keeps track of all the information in a sleep diary, and provides the results from the previous night’s sleep in an easy-to-read graphic. which the user can see and learn how long it takes to reach stable sleep, how many times you wake during the night, the sequence of your sleep stages throughout the night and how much quality sleep you get. Your phone’s microphone will also record noises around you and identify which ones wake you up. “If you’re used to living in New York City, for example,” Baharav says, “the traffic and sirens may not wake you, but your fridge banging on at 4 a.m. might.” So your sleep plan might include a service call from your appliance company—or a new fridge.

After the five-night assessment, you get a personalized sleep plan based on your particular sleep issues. The plan guides users about when to go to bed and when to wake up, suggests exercises to help them unwind and forget about the day’s worries, and even outlines how to spend buffer times, or the one to two hours before bed when it helps to do routine, unexciting things such as taking a bath, listening to music, or reading (but no thrillers). Based on the information you entered, for example, your smartphone screen will alert you about when to start your buffer time activity, with something like a cartoon of someone sitting quietly on a sofa with the instruction: Start Buffer Zone.

The suggestions are offered sequentially over four to six weeks to give you time to learn the new behaviors. If you don’t reach a goal, you try again, and when you achieve your goal, such as getting out of bed at the same time for several days in a row, the program provides a new target. You can also pull up your sleep data at any time to see patterns and trends. And the app reminds you what not to do as well: No! Don’t take a nap now.

While there are other such user-friendly CBTI kits available, Shelby Harris, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program, Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, says SleepRate is “more comprehensive since it also takes into account medical causes for insomnia.” Because there is a shortage of qualified CBTI practitioners, she sees such apps as viable and welcome first-line efforts for helping people with insomnia. If the programs don’t help, she says, then patients can see a sleep specialist.

And what about people who don’t have a diagnosable sleep disorder but are simply sleep deprived? Could such a program, for example, help parents of babies and young children to find more good quality sleep? Baharav says that’s coming soon. Stay tuned.

The accounts of women experiencing the negative side effects of the NuvaRing contraceptive are gruesome, and their stories are part of the evidence that led to the $100 million settlement last week with NuvaRing maker Merck & Co. The pharmaceutical company agreed to hand over $100 million for liability lawsuits claiming the ring caused blood clots that sometimes led to heart attacks and even death, although Merck denied fault. The women argued they were not adequately warned about these side effects, and about 3,800 of them are eligible to partake in the settlement.

Despite the well-publicized risks, some women are finding it difficult to ditch a contraceptive that has provided them with consistency and convenience. Oftentimes, finding the right birth control takes years of trial and error, and side effects range from weight gain to decreased libido. For this reason, when women find the right contraceptive, they tend to develop a certain loyalty to it.

Sarah, 26, a graduate student in New York City, struggled with finding the right birth control since she was 20 years old. During the year she was on the pill, she put on weight and was constantly having mood swings. She’d feel depressed one day and highly irritable the next. She switched to the NuvaRing five years ago after a friend suffering similar effects made the swap, and it has been smooth sailing ever since. “I hated the whole contraceptive experience, but with the NuvaRing I don’t experience any of that,” she says.

The NuvaRing ring is a flexible ring that women insert inside their vagina and remove for the week of their period. Like an oral contraceptive, it releases the hormones progestin and estrogen (though at lower levels), preventing ovulation and sperm from reaching the egg, but you don’t have to remember to take a pill every morning. Women prefer it for its convenience, the localized hormones, and the fact that there’s less accountability. In 2012, there were about 5.2 million prescriptions in the U.S. for the NuvaRing, according to IMS Health, a healthcare technology and information company.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)–the medical authority on all things related to baby-making–NuvaRing leads to a slight increased risk of deep vein thrombosis, heart attack, and stroke. And, as highlighted in a safety warning on NuvaRing’s website, the danger is higher for some women, like those over 35 who smoke more than 15 cigarettes a day or women who have multiple risk factors for heart disease. Its typical use failure rate is 9%, the equivalent of an oral contraceptive, according to the CDC.

Following the settlement Friday, Merck issued a statement saying, “We stand behind the research that supported the approval of NuvaRing, and our continued work to monitor the safety of the medicine.”

Though the side effects of the NuvaRing are very real, for many women it bears no complications. “I am extremely busy with very irregular hours and travel for my job,” says Julie*, 27, who works for a film production company in Los Angeles, California, “so the NuvaRing is the ideal fit for my lifestyle. I have virtually no side effects, so I plan to remain on it for the foreseeable future.”

Other women simply shrug off the dangers. “Every drug you take comes with risks, from Asprin to birth control to allergy medicine,” says Ricci Ellis, 31, a respiratory therapist in Little Rock, Arkansas, who switched from the pill after consistently forgetting to take it. “For me, the benefits of NuvaRing far outweigh the risks.” Because she’s not not a smoker and leads an active and healthy lifestyle, Ellis considers herself relatively safe from the risks of blood clots, strokes, and sudden death.

“It is absolutely essential that people are aware of the risks associated with each method of contraception,” says Bill Albert, the chief program officer at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The American Heart Association (AHA) recently recommended that women considering birth control get screened for high blood pressure, which can put them at a greater risk for clots and stroke. ”Equally important, however, is how such risks compare to those of other methods, and to pregnancy as well.”

According to Albert, the side effects need to be placed in a broader context so that they are neither dismissed nor viewed with disproportionate alarm. “One of the highest risk of blood clots comes with pregnancy. Consequently, if an individual is having sex and doesn’t want to get pregnant, skipping birth control altogether for fear of blood clots is not the best way to protect your health,” says Albert. “This is not meant to be cavalier, but the doubling of a rare risk is still rare.”

Medical experts are careful to not trivialize the risks, but Dr. Eve Espey, the chair of ACOG’s Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women and a professor in the Department of Ob-Gyn at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, says the NuvaRing settlement hasn’t changed how she counsels her patients. “It’s always tragic and horrible when a woman has a bad outcome or dies from a blood clot. But to then label that method as dangerous often translates into more unintended pregnancies with a higher risk than using the method,” says Dr. Espey. Though popular for its convenience, the NuvaRing isn’t the most effective form of birth control out there. And neither is the pill. The intrauterine device (IUD) and the implant are considered the two safest and most effective forms of birth control available, with a typical use failure rate of 0.8% and 0.05% respectively.

When asked if women currently using NuvaRing should talk to their doctors about other options, Dr. Espey said, “How do you prepare for the event that’s so rare?”

But it’s making Sarah think twice. “I’m definitely concerned about the risks,” she says. “I am making an appointment with my gynecologist to discuss options.”

2014-02-10

Biggest Loser winner Rachel Frederickson shocked audiences Tuesday when she revealed she had dropped 155 pounds, nearly 60% of her starting weight. Earlier this week a Saudi man also made headlines for losing an astronomical 700 pounds, shedding 50% of his original weight. With the success of shows like The Biggest Loser, Extreme Makeover, and My 600-lb Life, extreme weight loss has become somewhat of a gawking pastime among American audiences. But while audiences can witness these people’s external changes in appearance, what’s happening internally when a body shrinks to half its size?

Obesity is typically measured by body mass index (BMI), with a BMI of 30 and above considered obese, and BMI of 40 and above considered severely obese. For people with a BMI above 40 to reach a healthier weight and actually maintain it, weight-loss surgery is usually the only option. For a 5’10? man, that’s about 280 pounds, and for 5’5? woman, approximately 240 pounds.

Once the pounds start shedding, people’s perception of their own size remains skewed while they internalize their new bodies. As they adjust, they continue to make a lot of space for themselves, like selecting large spaces to sit. ”Internally, people still think they are large. They swing their arms further out from their body like a helicopter, thinking their hips are still as wide as they used to be, even though they aren’t,” says Dr. Roxanne Sukol, a preventive medicine specialist at Cleveland Clinic.

The first 25 to 30 pounds are the easiest to drop, and usually accompanied by immediate improvements in blood pressure, blood sugar, and breathing. It becomes harder to lose the pounds after that initial period, but with each additional pound lost, physicians notice improvements in virtually every organ system.

However, if an individual’s weight has caused significant health problems, like heart issues or diabetes, such problems don’t go away so easily. Even when a person recovers, ailments developed along the way can remain. “We see blood pressure and sugar improve rapidly, but if your obesity caused you to have a dilated heart, that might take longer to heal–if it ever heals,” Dr. Sukol says. Excess skin can also remain after weight is dropped, but it usually adapts to the body after a period of time.

Physical therapy is nearly always needed to continue the healing process. If an individual has not been mobile for years, their muscle and skeletal systems are likely damaged. Our knees and lower extremities aren’t meant to hold the amount of weight severely obese individuals carry, and that weight can interfere with blood flow to the heart, which is one of the reasons obese people experience bloating. The good news, according to Dr. Sukol, is that, with every five pounds lost, an enormous amount of pressure on the knee caps is relieved.

Appetite can also change. When individuals replace foods like white breads and potato chips with intact carbohydrates like beans, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, they tend to lose weight and feel more satiated from eating more nutritious food.

Lastly, the mental health effects that come from significant weight loss are immeasurable. From a biological level, neurotransmitters in the brain work better when a person is on a healthy diet. But socially, the effect of weight loss is just as great. “Being obese is such a stigma in our society, that I think the stress of being obese and having to cope with how people look at you is something impossible to relate to,” says Dr. Sukol. And that’s a considerable weight off someone’s shoulders.

First Stroke Guidelines for Women Created

Hormonal changes caused by pregnancy or birth control are factors in the third leading cause of death for females, the American Heart Association reports

The American Heart Association outlined Thursday its first ever guidelines for primary care provider sand OBGYNs developed specifically to prevent women’s strokes, the third leading cause of death for U.S. women, and the fifth leading cause for men.Stroke risk factors for both men and women include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking, but certain hormonal changes can reportedly increase a woman’s risk.

“If you are a woman…your risk is also influenced by hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other sex-related factors,” said Cheryl Bushnell, M.D., M.H.S., author of the new scientific statement published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

According to the guidelines, women with a history of high blood pressure before pregnancy are at risk for preeclampsia, a blood pressure disorder that occurs during pregnancy. Preeclampsia doubles the risk for stroke and increases the risk for high blood pressure four-fold, according to the guidelines.

The combination of high blood pressure and birth control use can also raise a woman’s risk for stroke. Migraines with aura, diabetes, depression, and emotional stress, which occur more frequently among women, are also contributing factors.

Are you ‘normal’ in bed?

2014-02-07

Ian Kerner, a sexuality counselor and New York Times best-selling author, writes about sex and relationships for CNN Health. Read more from him on his website, GoodInBed.

(CNN) — How does your sex life measure up? That’s the central premise of “The Normal Bar,” a new book by Chrisanna Northrup and sociologists Pepper Schwartz and James Witte.

Based on the responses of an Internet survey of some 70,000 people, “The Normal Bar” endeavors to ease people’s concerns about their sexual relationships by providing readers with an idea of what’s “normal” for most couples — from how often they have sex, to how sexually adventurous they are, to how they romance each other outside the bedroom.

“It isn’t about a 98.6 kind of normal — just the normal of exceptionally happy couples (gay and straight) and what we can learn from them,” Schwartz says.

One juicy nugget — 86% of all men and women are intrigued by having kinky sex. “This just goes to show that both men and women want to be kept on their toes,” says Patty Brisben, sex educator and entrepreneur. “I can’t think of any couple who would be ‘satisfied’ with predictable sex for the same reason people don’t watch the same movie every weekend: There’s no mystery, no excitement.”

Admittedly it’s hard to resist checking out how we match up to other people between the sheets. “Couples that come into my practice with complaints about their sex life are often comparing themselves to a rather unrealistic and fictitious standard,” Dr. Sue Varma says. “They have grown up watching Hollywood flicks believing that bedroom passion should be spontaneous.”

Adds social psychologist Justin Lehmiller, “Almost all couples, both heterosexual and same-sex, worry about how their relationship stacks up. This naturally leads us to compare our relationships to those of other couples.”

It may be natural, but is that comparison healthy? It depends, say experts.

“It’s tempting to think that statistics about how often other people have sex can tell you how often you should be having sex,” explains Emily Nagoski, a sex health educator. “But other people’s sex lives have nothing to do with yours. Experiencing sex differently doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong, it just means you’re doing it differently.”

On the other hand, the quest to keep up with the Jones’ sex life can have its perks, too. Although comparison “can be destructive if you think of the ‘norms’ as being ideals to strive for, it can also be empowering if it makes you feel that your experience has been validated and that you are less alone,” says Margie Nichols, a sex therapist and pioneer in her work with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.

“Because kink and open relationships are more common among lesbian, gay and bisexual people, these couples face more options and choices, something that can add a layer of complexity to a couple’s sex life as well as more freedom.”

Comparison may even inspire you to amp up your sex life a bit. For instance, “The Normal Bar” authors found that 48% of men want their female partners to be more romantic — and that the No. 1 thing they want more of is communication, not sex.

“Responses like these might encourage some women to raise the bar on how they talk and act in the bedroom,” sex educator Jamye Waxman says.

The survey results call into question stereotypes that men compartmentalize sex and emotions, says Jean Malpas, a psychotherapist in New York.

“Men are often described as rigidly separating sex and feelings,” he says. “However, many straight, gay or bisexual men I encounter in my clinical practice appreciate meaningful sexual intimacy. They often long for a sexuality anchored in the complicity and playfulness of their romantic relationship.”

One of the goals of “The Normal Bar” is to get couples talking about their sex lives and trying new things. It’s an experience that Nagoski sees reflected in her own work as a college sex educator.

“By the end of the semester, my students know they’re normal, but not because their quantity, quality or frequency of sex falls within some statistical range, compared to other people,” she says. “They feel normal because they understand how varied people are, how many different ways there are to be ‘normal,’ and that the real measure for ‘normal’ is mutual consent and satisfaction.”

Did You Take Your Multivitamin Today?

2014-02-03

Many of us in the healthcare field have preached for decades that people should not rely on vitamins in pill form to meet the recommended doses of vitamin intake. Instead, we’ve urged our patients to get their nutrients from the foods we eat.

Now, however, a certain population of women may have an important reason to take multivitamins. New research data, which were extracted from the Women’s Health Initiative Clinical Trials and the Women’s Health Observational Study, show that older women with invasive breast cancer—cancer that has spread outside of the breast duct—may gain a new advantage from taking a multivitamin each day; in fact, these vitamins may reduce the risk that their breast cancer will recur.

Wow.

That’s right. This research, recently published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, suggests that multivitamin/mineral supplements may help older women who develop breast cancer to survive their disease.

Multivitamin/mineral supplements are the most commonly consumed dietary supplements among adults in the U.S. They usually contain small amounts of 20 to 30 vitamins and minerals, often at levels reaching 100 percent of U.S Recommended Dietary Allowances or less. The manufacturers of these products recommend that people take one pill daily.

A comparison of those who took a multivitamin and those who didn’t

Fortunately, these two studies were large enough so that the results of this new vitamin-and-mineral research were valid.

During the extensive study period, 385 of the women diagnosed with breast cancer during the study were using supplements. The vast majority of these had been taking the supplements prior to being diagnosed. A comparison of mortality rates revealed that the women with invasive breast cancer who took multivitamins/mineral supplements were 30 percent less likely to die from their cancers than were the women with invasive breast cancers who hadn’t taken any supplements.

Could merely taking these supplements explain the difference in these statistics? Well, the researchers then also looked at all the other potential possibilities such as smoking history, race, ethnicity, age, depression, diet, alcohol use, physical activities, age at diagnosis of breast cancer, and diabetes. And after considering all these other factors with due diligence, the scientists concluded that the supplement usage was what made the difference in the mortality rates.

But you still must eat nutritious foods!

Now, here comes my regular caveat: Please don’t interpret these research results to mean that you can stop eating a healthy diet and rely solely on a supplement pill to assure that you are getting the nutrients you need. Instead, consider clipping a coupon for a multivitamin from the Sunday paper this week and start taking one, especially if you are over age 50, have had breast cancer, and have a chance of recurrence.

There isn’t research yet to determine if taking this pill prevents breast cancer in those not diagnosed, but research is certainly underway to try to decipher this as well.

LEAVE YOUR

How to Talk to Your Kids About ‘Sexting

Sexting refers to sending texts with inappropriate (i.e., sexual) messages or pictures of people naked or performing sexual acts. In a recent study published in the February 2014 issue of Pediatrics, scientists surveyed 410 students in the 7th grade and found that 22 percent of them had “sexted.” The study also found that kids who had sexted may be more likely to actually engage in other sexual behaviors.

Sexting has serious consequences

School. Schools take sexting seriously. Being suspended or expelled can result. It will go on the “sexter’s” record, which may affect job or college acceptances.

Criminal charges. It is a crime in some states. Police may get involved in other cases as well.

Social/emotional consequences. It can be hurtful, even to the point of social isolation, for the person who has sent pictures and sometimes even for the person receiving the messages.

What can parents do?

Talk to your child. As with all aspects of social media and technology, talk to your children about sexting and what it is. Explain that it is never acceptable. As soon as you hand your child a digital device, be it a phone or a tablet or a computer, you should begin the discussion that sending or receiving inappropriate pictures is never okay, nor is sending explicit sexual messages. Discuss that it is not funny and can get them into a lot of trouble. Remind children that messages that get sent can be seen by anyone and can’t be taken back.

Monitor. Again, from day one with a digital device, make it clear to your child that having that device is a privilege and not a right. Along with that privilege, your child should be aware that you have the right and responsibility to monitor your child’s activities on the device. You should always know the passcodes to all of their devices.

Minimize temptations. A lot of sexting occurs under peer pressure when groups of kids are together. Collecting cell phones at parties or at sleepovers and so forth may help.

Discuss the news. There is no shortage of incidents involving teens and sexting in the news, as well as news about the negative consequences that resulted. Bring these evens to your child’s attention and discuss.

Network. Discuss these issues with the school and other parents. Schools can do workshops for both parents and kids. Other parents sometimes have advice or experiences to share that can be helpful.

Learn. Kids are way more tech-savvy than their parents. Take the time to learn about the sites they are using and how they work. It may actually be a great way to spend time with your child because most kids get pretty excited to teach adults how to navigate the digital world.